jeaton [emphasis added - PDN] Earlier on in this thread, there was some argument over the issue of where a rational transportation policy should start. I am in the group that says government transportation planners, which would be a mix of government bureaucrats and contracted private entities should be laying the ground work. Others argue that the market place, that is the collective result of the individual decisions should drive the result. [snip] So I again raise the point, if the market place for travel chooses to ignore a significant part of the cost, is the result rational? By the way, even if our government decided to spend mega bucks on high speed rail service, I do not foresee any mandates for the auto driving public to abandon their cars. For as long as I can see we will probably always be in a situation where we are in a multi-modal environment. Automobiles will be needed and justified for myself and millions like me who live in the rural areas of our nation. I don't ever expect to be able to walk to a public transportation system starting in my small town that will connect me with the world. (On the other hand, in the unlikely event I were to move back to Chicago, I would, as I did many years ago, probably live without owning a car. In that place, cabs and the occasional rent-a-car along with public mass transport can do the job nicely at some considerably lower cost.)
[snip]
So I again raise the point, if the market place for travel chooses to ignore a significant part of the cost, is the result rational?
By the way, even if our government decided to spend mega bucks on high speed rail service, I do not foresee any mandates for the auto driving public to abandon their cars. For as long as I can see we will probably always be in a situation where we are in a multi-modal environment. Automobiles will be needed and justified for myself and millions like me who live in the rural areas of our nation. I don't ever expect to be able to walk to a public transportation system starting in my small town that will connect me with the world. (On the other hand, in the unlikely event I were to move back to Chicago, I would, as I did many years ago, probably live without owning a car. In that place, cabs and the occasional rent-a-car along with public mass transport can do the job nicely at some considerably lower cost.)
Excellent point (the 1st one emphasized above). This may be where the pure private sector marketplace and Adam Smith's proverbial "invisible hand" of responses and decisions appear to be dysfunctional for the particular circumstances. As such, we need an economist-type to explain such things as "external dis-economies or costs" and the "Tragedy of the Commons", and why they may justify - or actually mandate - that the government step in to provide the missing inputs to complete the system for analysis, and so on.
As to the 2nd point emphasized above: Yes, but this morning (and the past couple mornings as well) I heard an ad on the 5:00 AM "America in the Morning" AM radio show for IBM that talks about how a "congestion management fee" as implemented in Stockholm (?) reduced traffic delays by 20 %. [I know that has been done in London a couple of years ago as well.] But this morning I thought - "Huh ? That kind of thing used to be reserved for policy wonks and think tanks. Now it's the basis for an ad on (almost) prime-time drive-time radio ?" If it's come to that, then we may well be seeing a sea-change in public policy and perception towards compelling - excuse me, incentivising - people to leave their cars behind, at least in those limited kinds of special conditions.
Liked your example and the details, too. Someplace I was told that a "real person example" makes it easier to understand a technical discussion such as this one.
- Paul North.
Earlier on in this thread, there was some argument over the issue of where a rational transportation policy should start. I am in the group that says government transportation planners, which would be a mix of government bureaucrats and contracted private entities should be laying the ground work. Others argue that the market place, that is the collective result of the individual decisions should drive the result.
When it comes to transportation, I see problems with the latter. To illustrate. In May, my wife are traveling to Maryland to visit family. We are taking public transportation-she will fly from Milwaukee to Baltimore and I will take trains from Fox Lake, IL to DC. Renting a car at our destination will put our total transportation cost for the trip at about $650.
I have a nice car, gets about 20 MPG and I could use it for the trip. At $3.00 per gallon, I estimate the 2000 miles I would drive would would run me about $300.00. We could stay with family half way, so I wouldn't have to consider lodging enroute, and since we are both retired on pension, we don't have to factor any lost income.
Are we making a rational decision to spend twice as much money to use public transportation rather than drive? Maybe. When I figure up my total cost for the vehicle-ownership, fuel, maintenance and repairs and insurance-I find that the driving the trip would cost me about 50 cents a mile or $1,000.
Of course, our decision to use public transportation rest more on personal preference than any kind of cash constraint, but I would submit that the largest proportition of the traveling public would decide on a mode of travel based on the direct cost. i.e., fuel expense and ignore the rest of the expense as a sunken cost.
So I again raise the point, if the market place for travel chooses to ignore a significan part of the cost, is the result rational?
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
Paul_D_North_Jr Railway Man [snip] The sweet spot for high-speed rail for the business traveler is the 100-500 mile corridor with frequent service. Doesn't matter where the station is, as long as it's either center-city with subway or taxis or both, or suburban with a rental car lot next to a beltway. That will 100% nail my business everytime. Hopefully TSA won't ruin it too. At the bottom end of that range it beats driving. At the top end it beats flying. There's some significant market for the business traveler in the 1,000-mile corridor, too, because often the airline schedules are so poor that the "time savings" doesn't exist. [snip; emphasis added - PDN.]] RWM Sadly, don't bet on TSA not ruining it. See what the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, its Transportation Security Administration, and the U.S. Coast Guard have done here to the "mule skinners" who walk alongside the 2 mules that pull a faux-replica canal boat on about a 1-mile ride in a land-locked segment of the former Lehigh Canal in Hugh Moore Park in Easton, PA, at: "Mule Guides Must Get ID Cards" - The Morning Call, Allentown, PA, March 24, 2009, page B-1: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_5mules.6828782mar24,0,1129022.story and, "National Canal Museum Mule Drivers Subjected to Increased Anti-Terrorism Screening" - The Express-Times, Easton, PA, March 24, 2009, at: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/easton/index.ssf/2009/03/national_canal_museum_mule_dri.html "The organization will pay $105 for each of four workers to get biometric identification cards, which include their photos and fingerprint information, by next month. The cards are good for five years." I couldn't make this stuff up. Whatever happened to common sense ? "We have met the enemy, and he is us !" - Pogo [apologies to whoever here's signature line that is] - Paul North.
Railway Man [snip] The sweet spot for high-speed rail for the business traveler is the 100-500 mile corridor with frequent service. Doesn't matter where the station is, as long as it's either center-city with subway or taxis or both, or suburban with a rental car lot next to a beltway. That will 100% nail my business everytime. Hopefully TSA won't ruin it too. At the bottom end of that range it beats driving. At the top end it beats flying. There's some significant market for the business traveler in the 1,000-mile corridor, too, because often the airline schedules are so poor that the "time savings" doesn't exist. [snip; emphasis added - PDN.]] RWM
RWM
Sadly, don't bet on TSA not ruining it. See what the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, its Transportation Security Administration, and the U.S. Coast Guard have done here to the "mule skinners" who walk alongside the 2 mules that pull a faux-replica canal boat on about a 1-mile ride in a land-locked segment of the former Lehigh Canal in Hugh Moore Park in Easton, PA, at:
"Mule Guides Must Get ID Cards" - The Morning Call, Allentown, PA, March 24, 2009, page B-1:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1_5mules.6828782mar24,0,1129022.story
and, "National Canal Museum Mule Drivers Subjected to Increased Anti-Terrorism Screening" - The Express-Times, Easton, PA, March 24, 2009, at:
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/easton/index.ssf/2009/03/national_canal_museum_mule_dri.html
"The organization will pay $105 for each of four workers to get biometric identification cards, which include their photos and fingerprint information, by next month. The cards are good for five years."
I couldn't make this stuff up. Whatever happened to common sense ?
"We have met the enemy, and he is us !" - Pogo [apologies to whoever here's signature line that is]
Bringing this up again because of Bob Johnston's news article in the May Trains. He goes over the various choke points on Amtrak's Chicago-St Louis service. Not that elimination of these would put the service over the top, but their elimination-at what would be a low cost compared to even 110MPH service-could pull as much as an hour out of the current schedule.
I would pose this. If we don't want to pay the price for high speed or "mid-speed" (110MPH max), why not consider 79MPH top speed service with enough money put into fixing the slow spots so that the service matches what might be typical auto drive time. No doubt finding the price for all the fixes would put a number of good railroad civil engineers to work, but I could see the realization of some goals. For example, I think there can be a bigger bang for the public buck to get people out of cars rather than planes and into trains. If we are not putting trillions into rail infrastructure, maybe there is enough to improve service frequency. That could address the convenience factor of personal vehicle leaving at any time vs. the fixed schedule of a train.
Clearly, this is not a very glamouous proposal, and I don't expect that this would get a massive shift out of cars and planes. On the other hand, I can't see that the $8 billion that is now on the table will get us very far down the high speed line. At something on the order of $50,000,000 a mile for high speed we would need $50 billion for just 2 or 3 regional projects. Depending on who is counting, there are anywhere from 11 to 20 such routes. That means anywhere between one half and one whole trillion bucks. It doesn't bother me so much, but that many zeros put a lot of people into a cataconic state.
garyla - Gee, what makes you think it'll be you taxpayers out west (only) that get stuck with the cost of a Disneyland-to-Las Vegas mag-lev train ? The way it looks to me, we'll all get stuck with its cost, if it is ever built. And likewise, the rest of us need it exactly just as much as you do !
- PDN.
Just wait, folks.
Granted that it's a long shot, but if we taxpayers out west get stuck with the cost of a Disneyland-to-Las Vegas mag-lev train, it'll make these other proposals look cheap! And, (sarcasm added here) it's exactly what we need.
Still, the worst government spending is not pork-barrel or excesses in the military, it's rewarding people for bad behavior (e.g., breeding fatherless children--the kind of gift that keeps on giving). Subsidize anything and you get more of it.
oltmannd That Quad Cities - Chicago service sure sets my "pork alert" antenna buzzing. The best use of our money is to provide service through corn country to the 132nd largest metro area in the US?
That Quad Cities - Chicago service sure sets my "pork alert" antenna buzzing. The best use of our money is to provide service through corn country to the 132nd largest metro area in the US?
On the other hand, who knows for sure? Someone living in the 132nd largest might want to get out of town-a lot!
Two important points from the above posts are worth emphasizing [emphasis added - PDN]:
By UChicagoMatt on 03-23-09 at 10:48 PM: "The bulk of the truly slow ride is still in Chicagoland where at least 30 minutes is wasted on every trip going slowly or waiting for the hand-moved gate on the SW side to be moved. Equally antiquated is the hand-moved switches all along the ex-GM&O route."
Hey Matt - Welcome to the Forum ! Good comment, too.
By erikem on 03-24-09 at 12:57 AM: "I'd also wonder what the optimum speed would be on the LOSSAN corridor, especially considering trade-offs between speed and number of stops - a train that takes two hours to get from San Diego to LA would be more appealing to me if I could get on at Solana Beach than a train that took one and a half hours between LA and SD where I'd have to get on at Oceanslide - though someone living near downtown San Diego might think differently."
UChicagoMatt However, money spent improving rail is never a waste when compared to military waste or unwanted pork projects.
However, money spent improving rail is never a waste when compared to military waste or unwanted pork projects.
Never?
I hope this isn't what you really meant, after all the RWM has written!
Is the military really any more "wasteful" than any other branch of gov't?
"Unwanted port project" is oxymoronic. SOMEBODY wanted it or it wouldn't have made it into a bill. Remeber, one person's pork is another's "other white meat".
You can make a case that Amtrak's LD trains should make the "Top Ten" list of gov't waste if you go strictly on a cost benefit analysis - even if you throw in all the "soft" benefits.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Railway Man Most important question is: Would a sufficiently large number of people actually use HSR if available? I suspect the answer is highly dependent on the implementation. As usual, the devil is in the details. Implementation studies have to have a general outline, and a site-specific analysis. It's not necessary to reinvent the general methodology every time (and undesirable because it makes comparisons difficult), but it is necessary to develop site-specific independent variables. I think we could agree without even thinking about it that a HSR corridor between Tonopah and Fallon, Nevada, would probably not have very many riders, and an HSR corridor between San Diego and Los Angeles probably would. But in between is where the answers are not yet known.RWM
Most important question is: Would a sufficiently large number of people actually use HSR if available? I suspect the answer is highly dependent on the implementation.
As usual, the devil is in the details.
Implementation studies have to have a general outline, and a site-specific analysis. It's not necessary to reinvent the general methodology every time (and undesirable because it makes comparisons difficult), but it is necessary to develop site-specific independent variables. I think we could agree without even thinking about it that a HSR corridor between Tonopah and Fallon, Nevada, would probably not have very many riders, and an HSR corridor between San Diego and Los Angeles probably would. But in between is where the answers are not yet known.
No argument from me about "the devil is in the details".
My intent when referring to "implementation" was in the very broad sense. In addition to location I would add stations (location, parking, etc), scheduling, reliability, interior design and fares. As an example, I would imagine the Acela would be a lot less appealing to you if it was equipped with 3-2 seating. HSR could lose a lot of appeal if no one bothers to maintain the equipment.
Pretty obvious that the LOSSAN corridor would get a lot more traffic than a Tonopah Fallon corridor (haven't been to either Tonopah or Fallon but did get to Dayton, NV), though it might be easier and cheaper to make a truly high speed corridor between Tonopah and Fallon. I'd also wonder what the optimum speed would be on the LOSSAN corridor, especially considering trade-offs between speed and number of stops - a train that takes two hours to get from San Diego to LA would be more appealing to me if I could get on at Solana Beach than a train that took one and a half hours between LA and SD where I'd have to get on at Oceanslide - though someone living near downtown San Diego might think differently.
Come to think of it, just getting the LA-SD to be consistently under two hours would be a much better investment than trying to get HSR between LA and the Bay Area.
I tend to agree that thinking small on this route---conventional equipment and no dedicated ROW will gather some new riders and make the trip more time and energy efficient. But more traffic goes Chicago-St. Louis than could ever hope to go to the Quad Cities. The bulk of the truly slow ride is still in Chicagoland where at least 30 minutes is wasted on every trip going slowly or waiting for the hand-moved gate on the SW side to be moved. Equally antiquated is the hand-moved switches all along the ex-GM&O route. Without extensive upgrades to ROW, closure or overpasses for the 422 crossings (Amtrak study pdf), there is only so much to gain. However, money spent improving rail is never a waste when compared to military waste or unwanted pork projects. Spending billions on O'Hare expansion (or even the Peotone option) could be better spent moving people onto true high-speed lines to major cities throughout the Midwest and eliminate these hundreds of small regional flights tha clog O'Hare.
Me, too - that was part of the "charm" of that post ! - PDN.
Railway Man ...it's shelf art.
I gotta remember this one!
Railway Man erikem Railway Man It isn't rocket surgery though there is a lot of work involved, and it's defensible. Mixed metaphors here??? Only on purpose!
erikem Railway Man It isn't rocket surgery though there is a lot of work involved, and it's defensible. Mixed metaphors here???
Railway Man It isn't rocket surgery though there is a lot of work involved, and it's defensible.
It isn't rocket surgery though there is a lot of work involved, and it's defensible.
Mixed metaphors here???
Only on purpose!
erikem - He (RWM) probably picked it up from working with those young whippersnappers ("Generation X") in his firm. My daughter (age 30) uses terms like that often in casual technical conversation. (When she was doing her M.S. Geology work at Cape Canaveral from 2000 - 2002, popular T-shirts said, "Why yes, I am a rocket scientist !".) To be perhaps stupefying obvious here: "Rocket surgery" = intentional contraction of "rocket science" + "brain surgery", both being emblematic and icons of professions and businesses that require high levels of technical training and knowledge, skill, expertise, and sometimes imagination (the former) and/ or judgment (the latter). Interestingly, the math, physics, and equations that are the stuff of such studies are more part of the rocket scientist's knowledge base than the brain surgeon's. More importantly, the brain surgeon is presumably paid well; the rocket scientist, not so much. So those who worry about compensation maybe should want to say that, "Yes, it is brain surgery, not rocket science."
Railway Man Difficulty in not fully understanding economic and scientific issues is supposed to be part of the risk analysis in the feasibility study. If it's naked of that level of analysis, it's shelf art. RWM
[emphasis added - PDN.]
Interesting insight, disclosure, and back-handed critique - I'm not sure that it is stated or appreciated by those involved as often as it should be (outside of financial proxy statement and report kind of things).
Reminds me of a couple of aphorisms: "Behold the turtle - he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out." More to the point: "Ships are safe in port. But that's not where ships belong." - Adm. Grace Hopper, USN (dec'd.). Also reminds me of something I once read about the U.S. Presidency - "The easy decisions are made elsewhere; the hard ones come here. And if it's not a hard decision, then it's not much of a decision." Very little in life is risk-free - but some people have a problem accepting that. To me, the key is to understand the subject, find out about and minimize the risk as much as reasonably possible, and then make the decisions. The decision shouldn't always be to go ahead - not all projects are worthwhile - and one sign of a pro is the ability to walk away from a deal (quote from John Kneiling again).
Railway Man dehusman Railway ManStarting at Square 1 is not a bad thing -- it enables not being stuck with sunk cost in a not-so-good infrastructure such as Britain's small loading gauge. But they aren't starting at square one. Virtually every "high speed rail" proposal that is out there starts with overlaying a high speed passenger operation on top of an existing freight line, for example the territory between Chicago and St. Louis. Its not starting at square one, its just upgrading the existing facility to handle higher speed trains. True, and for 90 mph that may be acceptable. But for 110 mph or greater, my opinion is that those plans will come to naught. When it's all done, my opinion is it will be at least 90% new infrastructure and 10% shared. Because: The costs for shared infrastructure for compliant vehicles, extra energy to shove it down the track, train-control systems, electrification, track geometry, rail profile, maintenance costs for 286K and high-speed, will prove higher than just building new infrastructure. RWM
dehusman Railway ManStarting at Square 1 is not a bad thing -- it enables not being stuck with sunk cost in a not-so-good infrastructure such as Britain's small loading gauge. But they aren't starting at square one. Virtually every "high speed rail" proposal that is out there starts with overlaying a high speed passenger operation on top of an existing freight line, for example the territory between Chicago and St. Louis. Its not starting at square one, its just upgrading the existing facility to handle higher speed trains.
Railway ManStarting at Square 1 is not a bad thing -- it enables not being stuck with sunk cost in a not-so-good infrastructure such as Britain's small loading gauge.
But they aren't starting at square one. Virtually every "high speed rail" proposal that is out there starts with overlaying a high speed passenger operation on top of an existing freight line, for example the territory between Chicago and St. Louis. Its not starting at square one, its just upgrading the existing facility to handle higher speed trains.
True, and for 90 mph that may be acceptable. But for 110 mph or greater, my opinion is that those plans will come to naught. When it's all done, my opinion is it will be at least 90% new infrastructure and 10% shared. Because: The costs for shared infrastructure for compliant vehicles, extra energy to shove it down the track, train-control systems, electrification, track geometry, rail profile, maintenance costs for 286K and high-speed, will prove higher than just building new infrastructure.
I'd say 90-110 mph is a gray area. On one hand, you have roads like NS that have made 90 mph max part of stated policy. On the other hand, you have the CSX Hudson line with mixed traffic and passenger speeds >90 mph, although freight presence is minimal.
Good thing that new ROW and starting out with 90mph upgrades aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
This should be fun to watch.
erikemRailway Man It isn't rocket surgery though there is a lot of work involved, and it's defensible. Mixed metaphors here???
One joker in the deck is that some of the economic and scientific issues may not be fully understood when the analysis is done. Case in point, the experience of the 'no-fly' days after 9/11/2001 show that aircraft contrails have a noticeable affect on the climate in the US. It's possible that replacing medium haul air travel with HSR will reduce the number of contrails, however the costs of HSR may not outweigh the economic benefit of reducing contrails.
Difficulty in not fully understanding economic and scientific issues is supposed to be part of the risk analysis in the feasibility study. If it's naked of that level of analysis, it's shelf art.
Paul_D_North_JrRailway Man Allow me to summarize. If we are going to say, "the decision to encourage or discourage high-speed rail should rise and fall only on its economic merits," then we are submitting ourselves to the authority of secular, scientific, economic analysis and we had better be prepared to accept a decision that we might not like. [para. break inserted] The alternative to selecting on the basis of economic merits is to decide on the basis of personal preference. If personal preference is going to be the final and only authority, then claims that a particular personal preference is "better" because it has economic superiority, but that economic superiority argument is based on a selective application of personal preference, that's cynical and damaging. I get pretty hot when I see any interest group make claims ostensibly based on "science" that in fact are selective or smokescreen. RWM 1st para. is essentially: "Be careful what you wish for (i.e., HSR decisions on economic merits only) - you just might get it !" 2nd para. is harder (for me) to analyze and understand, but seems to be: "If decision is not made on economic merits, then it will be made by personal preference. And if so, then don't disguise and deny that's what it is by using the self-serving [and circular] argument that it's not personal preference but economic superiority instead, when that economic superiority claim is in turn based on certain personal preferences." OK, I think I get it (maybe). Can you provide an example - even a hypothetical - to illustrate how an economic superiority argument can be the manifestation of a disguised or selective personal preference ? (The better to know one when I see one, of course) Thanks for the illuminating debate and exposition. - Paul North.
Railway Man Allow me to summarize. If we are going to say, "the decision to encourage or discourage high-speed rail should rise and fall only on its economic merits," then we are submitting ourselves to the authority of secular, scientific, economic analysis and we had better be prepared to accept a decision that we might not like. [para. break inserted] The alternative to selecting on the basis of economic merits is to decide on the basis of personal preference. If personal preference is going to be the final and only authority, then claims that a particular personal preference is "better" because it has economic superiority, but that economic superiority argument is based on a selective application of personal preference, that's cynical and damaging. I get pretty hot when I see any interest group make claims ostensibly based on "science" that in fact are selective or smokescreen. RWM
[para. break inserted]
The alternative to selecting on the basis of economic merits is to decide on the basis of personal preference. If personal preference is going to be the final and only authority, then claims that a particular personal preference is "better" because it has economic superiority, but that economic superiority argument is based on a selective application of personal preference, that's cynical and damaging. I get pretty hot when I see any interest group make claims ostensibly based on "science" that in fact are selective or smokescreen.
1st para. is essentially: "Be careful what you wish for (i.e., HSR decisions on economic merits only) - you just might get it !"
2nd para. is harder (for me) to analyze and understand, but seems to be:
"If decision is not made on economic merits, then it will be made by personal preference. And if so, then don't disguise and deny that's what it is by using the self-serving [and circular] argument that it's not personal preference but economic superiority instead, when that economic superiority claim is in turn based on certain personal preferences."
OK, I think I get it (maybe). Can you provide an example - even a hypothetical - to illustrate how an economic superiority argument can be the manifestation of a disguised or selective personal preference ? (The better to know one when I see one, of course)
Thanks for the illuminating debate and exposition.
Point 1: Another way of saying this is, If you're going to submit your plan to an authority that you claim is higher, you might get surprised by its decision.
Point 2: You put it more clearly than I. Rational analysis aka science is misused by ideological agendas all the time. I hesitate to list examples because of its ability to instantly divert people into "yes it is true" "no it isn't true" sidewshows.
dehusmanRailway ManStarting at Square 1 is not a bad thing -- it enables not being stuck with sunk cost in a not-so-good infrastructure such as Britain's small loading gauge. But they aren't starting at square one. Virtually every "high speed rail" proposal that is out there starts with overlaying a high speed passenger operation on top of an existing freight line, for example the territory between Chicago and St. Louis. Its not starting at square one, its just upgrading the existing facility to handle higher speed trains.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
OTOH, I've done some work in a facility where "rocket surgery" is done, primarily trimming the fuel in the motors after casting and occasionally sawing the motors in half for destructive testing.
Allow me to summarize. If we are going to say, "the decision to encourage or discourage high-speed rail should rise and fall only on its economic merits," then we are submitting ourselves to the authority of secular, scientific, economic analysis and we had better be prepared to accept a decision that we might not like. The alternative to selecting on the basis of economic merits is to decide on the basis of personal preference. If personal preference is going to be the final and only authority, then claims that a particular personal preference is "better" because it has economic superiority, but that economic superiority argument is based on a selective application of personal preference, that's cynical and damaging. I get pretty hot when I see any interest group make claims ostensibly based on "science" that in fact are selective or smokescreen.
Well put.
Wow ! (again)
Insert discussion of sensitivity analysis here - i.e., how much the results of such a study will vary if certain inputs are changed (or are assumed wrongly, etc.) by an incremental amount. For example, variations in the price of fuel don't affect the railroad's "per seat mile" costs very much, unlike the other modes. Airlines are probably most heavily dependent on interest rates for their equipment financing, and so on. What results from that is essentially a shaded or "bell-curve" like range of probable outcomes for each likely range of inputs. The uncertainty and sensible debates will usually be at the outer edges, margins, and fringes ("Do we need 4 lanes or 5 lanes each way for that expressway ?"). Perhaps surprisingly, the core conclusions that are pretty solid will usually be obvious and hard to dismiss or ignore. Oddly, sometimes those are projects or improvements that are glaringly obvious because they haven't been done or touched (a "3rd rail issue" in the current vernacular) precisely because they will offend someone or some group, or environmental issue, or require a huge amount of funding, etc., and no one has wanted to acknowledge that there's "an elephant in the living room". But if the study next goes through a political screen (that version of sensitivity analysis is essentially "How sensitive am I and my constituents to the results of this study ?") to selectively add and subtract projects and needs on other bases (by definition here, not the result of rational study and analysis), then the result of that process and review will look a lot like our current transportation non-policy, in my humble opinion.
With this much money involved and at stake - and also some non-monetary considerations, such as security - somebody ought to be performing this kind of analysis, and using it as a guideline for allocating public (and private) funds accordingly. In a perfect world (or government), that would be the Federal DOT - but after the last administration, I'd be distrustful of their output unless a major effort was made to demonstrate that such a study was dispassionate, "disinterested", reasonably unbiased, and not results- or special-interest group- [road] oriented, etc. We'll see . . .
harpwolfRailway ManThe question is not whether HSR can be built and operated without public subsidy. The question is higher level: "What is the best value that can be delivered for the input?" Take all the dollars spent on all the cars, highways, airplanes, airports, railways, etc., and the benefits delivered, and the future growth rates, and the discounted value of money, and run the spreadsheet to show which has delivers the best cost-benefit ratio. This is a lot of work, but it's not impossible or impractical, especially in a defined corridor such as Los Angeles-San Francisco or Chicago-Minneapolis. But that benefit-cost ratio is largely influenced by variables you don't have. Notably, the future price of petroleum. If that channges, the costs of the other modes change dramatically, especially in the case of aviation. Right now America has bet "all the marbles" on oil remaining cheap forever. We are very nearly the only nation who has done so. What is the value, in hedging that bet? I mean strageically for the future of our country.
Railway ManThe question is not whether HSR can be built and operated without public subsidy. The question is higher level: "What is the best value that can be delivered for the input?" Take all the dollars spent on all the cars, highways, airplanes, airports, railways, etc., and the benefits delivered, and the future growth rates, and the discounted value of money, and run the spreadsheet to show which has delivers the best cost-benefit ratio. This is a lot of work, but it's not impossible or impractical, especially in a defined corridor such as Los Angeles-San Francisco or Chicago-Minneapolis.
But that benefit-cost ratio is largely influenced by variables you don't have. Notably, the future price of petroleum. If that channges, the costs of the other modes change dramatically, especially in the case of aviation.
Right now America has bet "all the marbles" on oil remaining cheap forever. We are very nearly the only nation who has done so. What is the value, in hedging that bet? I mean strageically for the future of our country.
All feasibility studies have to deal with many unknown future values. The methods are standardized and defensible. The methodology is to insert likely ranges of values, and derive ranges of results. This is done not just for items such as oil, but the discount rate, construction cost multipliers, labor rates, material costs, and so forth. At the end, you can pick and choose any set of future costs/values you wish, and see where the price thresholds lie.
Again, it's work, but we do this every day.
Bucyrus I would say that if HSR were a 100% private sector endeavor, then the value/input analysis could be logical, objective, and rational. But if such an analysis is developed to judge the viability of public transportation, I think that the result will be a biased, subjective, agenda-driven conclusion that favors the expansion of public transportation mainly as a pretext for the expansion of the public sector for its own self-interest.
You would hope this were true but I have seen many cases where decisions at several Class I were biased, subjective and agenda driven. The better managed railroads in question usually went for data driven decisions and the poorer managed railroads usually went toward the FODAS (Forces Of Darkness And Superstition). I first heard of FODAS seeing the last days of the Golden Empire at One Market Plaza but they lurk elsewhere at GM, AIG, etc.
Railway Man Bucyrus Well that is another question different from my question. And my question is only my interpretation of the question posed by Aricat. Your question of determining the best value that can be delivered for the input seems like a rational approach, but I don’t know how anybody can trust the answer to a question arrived at by such a complex formula. How can you measure benefits delivered when comparing the power efficiency of public transportation with the freedom and convenience of the private automobile, for instance? And how can you factor in all of the competing agendas and special interests of the public and private sectors that will skew the argument? There are lawmakers who already have an irrational view of the private automobile. Trying to come up with an objective assessment of the best value for the input seems like that proverbial example of scientifically predicting how the weather is affected on one side of the earth by a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side. Lawmakers are elected by the public, so in my view, my saying that a lawmaker is irrational is like my blaming the cloth for the poor taste of the dressmaker. The public gets to change out its lawmakers regularly, and they have 100% power to do so, one particular Supreme Court perhaps notwithstanding. If we say that a particular choice made by the public is irrational, don't we really mean, "I don't like the choice a majority of my fellow citizens made"? Because by definition the public can do whatever it wishes, and "irrationality" is only in relation to an arbitrary set of values chosen by someone else. I don't think we have a stone tablet handed down to us from on high that defines "rational" and "irrational," except in religious texts. Above that, I think you're saying it's impossible to make this comparison. I didn't say it was easy, but it's not impossible. It's a matter of breaking it down into pieces that can be quantified and evaluated. For example, the value of the personal choice afforded by the automobile can be captured in real-estate values, job creation, tax revenues, air emissions, and a good methodology assigns reasonable values to each, whether positive or negative. I can (or the people I work with, actually) measure each of these, and through various retrospective studies we can determine that if auto transportation is encouraged the net present value of all these inputs becomes X, and if public transportation is encouraged the net present value of these inputs becomes Y. It isn't rocket surgery though there is a lot of work involved, and it's defensible. I think where you might be having trouble (and you're not alone by any means) is with economic accountings that assign a value to things that strike you as personal preference, particularly preferences you regard as foolish or irrational or unnecessary. Bothers me too. But that's all economic analysis is: a summation of how people will vote with their money. For example, people prefer cars with top speeds 2x or 3x the legal speed limit. Economic analysis will tell us the price points at which people will relinquish this preference and settle for a car with a top speed of 75 mph. But saying that personal preferences we disagree with are "irrational or silly" has no basis in objective fact. The assignment of any personal preference to the categories "rational" or "irrational" is nothing but more personal preference. Economic analysis says this: "Given the way humans think or act, this is how they will spend their money and this is the economic results that will happen." If we want to change the way humans think or act, economic manipulation is actually an extremely blunt and ineffective instrument -- witness the taxation of "sins" which do not make sins go away. Religion and ideology are vastly more effective, as any long-term labor organizer knows. People in this country and other country vote far more strongly for their ideological beliefs than for their own pocketbooks. Allow me to summarize. If we are going to say, "the decision to encourage or discourage high-speed rail should rise and fall only on its economic merits," then we are submitting ourselves to the authority of secular, scientific, economic analysis and we had better be prepared to accept a decision that we might not like. The alternative to selecting on the basis of economic merits is to decide on the basis of personal preference. If personal preference is going to be the final and only authority, then claims that a particular personal preference is "better" because it has economic superiority, but that economic superiority argument is based on a selective application of personal preference, that's cynical and damaging. I get pretty hot when I see any interest group make claims ostensibly based on "science" that in fact are selective or smokescreen. RWM
Bucyrus Well that is another question different from my question. And my question is only my interpretation of the question posed by Aricat. Your question of determining the best value that can be delivered for the input seems like a rational approach, but I don’t know how anybody can trust the answer to a question arrived at by such a complex formula. How can you measure benefits delivered when comparing the power efficiency of public transportation with the freedom and convenience of the private automobile, for instance? And how can you factor in all of the competing agendas and special interests of the public and private sectors that will skew the argument? There are lawmakers who already have an irrational view of the private automobile. Trying to come up with an objective assessment of the best value for the input seems like that proverbial example of scientifically predicting how the weather is affected on one side of the earth by a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side.
Lawmakers are elected by the public, so in my view, my saying that a lawmaker is irrational is like my blaming the cloth for the poor taste of the dressmaker. The public gets to change out its lawmakers regularly, and they have 100% power to do so, one particular Supreme Court perhaps notwithstanding. If we say that a particular choice made by the public is irrational, don't we really mean, "I don't like the choice a majority of my fellow citizens made"? Because by definition the public can do whatever it wishes, and "irrationality" is only in relation to an arbitrary set of values chosen by someone else. I don't think we have a stone tablet handed down to us from on high that defines "rational" and "irrational," except in religious texts.
Above that, I think you're saying it's impossible to make this comparison. I didn't say it was easy, but it's not impossible. It's a matter of breaking it down into pieces that can be quantified and evaluated. For example, the value of the personal choice afforded by the automobile can be captured in real-estate values, job creation, tax revenues, air emissions, and a good methodology assigns reasonable values to each, whether positive or negative. I can (or the people I work with, actually) measure each of these, and through various retrospective studies we can determine that if auto transportation is encouraged the net present value of all these inputs becomes X, and if public transportation is encouraged the net present value of these inputs becomes Y. It isn't rocket surgery though there is a lot of work involved, and it's defensible.
I think where you might be having trouble (and you're not alone by any means) is with economic accountings that assign a value to things that strike you as personal preference, particularly preferences you regard as foolish or irrational or unnecessary. Bothers me too. But that's all economic analysis is: a summation of how people will vote with their money. For example, people prefer cars with top speeds 2x or 3x the legal speed limit. Economic analysis will tell us the price points at which people will relinquish this preference and settle for a car with a top speed of 75 mph. But saying that personal preferences we disagree with are "irrational or silly" has no basis in objective fact. The assignment of any personal preference to the categories "rational" or "irrational" is nothing but more personal preference. Economic analysis says this: "Given the way humans think or act, this is how they will spend their money and this is the economic results that will happen." If we want to change the way humans think or act, economic manipulation is actually an extremely blunt and ineffective instrument -- witness the taxation of "sins" which do not make sins go away. Religion and ideology are vastly more effective, as any long-term labor organizer knows. People in this country and other country vote far more strongly for their ideological beliefs than for their own pocketbooks.
I understand your points about rational and irrational, and I agree that the decisions of lawmakers are ultimately the decisions of the citizens. But I should explain what I meant by irrational lawmaker. I used the term in contrast to your method of determining the best value that can be delivered for the input, which I see as being rational. As I understand it, you are describing a comparative measure of actual numerical quantities of value versus cost, like a business plan. I would characterize that method as objective, logical, scientific, or mathematical. I used the term rational to mean all of those attributes. And I agree, that many of the inputs could be easily measured. And the more the inputs are broken down and subdivided, the more accurate the analysis will be.
However if lawmakers provide inputs to the calculation based on their personal philosophical dislike of the private automobile, I saw that as an irrational influence of what would otherwise be a rational calculation. And I assumed that lawmakers would be involved because we are talking about public projects. But I suppose, in the final analysis, a philosophical disdain for the automobile is an expression of part of the population, so it is an objective component that can be factored in without distorting the objectivity of the analysis.
But, aside from lawmakers reflecting the will of the people, we are still left with trying to assign numerical values to subjective things such as how much people prefer the privacy of the automobile, and their philosophical views on expanding socialized transportation. And then these individual personal preferences have to be averaged and collectivized in a way that trades the freedom of the individual for the greater good of society.
I would speculate that if you commissioned ten of these objective, scientific studies to determine the cost/benefit of HSR, you would get ten substantially different results. I am convinced that if government in general had the funds, they would connect every town with rail transit. I think this preference represents the majority view of government in general. So if they were to commission a study to discover whether HRS was in our economic interest, their study would say that it is.
I would say that if HSR were a 100% private sector endeavor, then the value/input analysis could be logical, objective, and rational. But if such an analysis is developed to judge the viability of public transportation, I think that the result will be a biased, subjective, agenda-driven conclusion that favors the expansion of public transportation mainly as a pretext for the expansion of the public sector for its own self-interest.
I think a first step to understanding any data presented for or against a policy is to understand who paid for the data and their point of view. In the 1950s there were long debates about the adequcy of highway taxes on trucks paying for the extra maintance caused by trucks. Needless to say the AAR studies were vastly different than the ATA studies.
I don't think their is necessarily any evil intent with these various spins on data but it is very important to understand just where people are coming from when the release a report. Recently the civil engineers released a report that said the country was way behind on infrastructure. I believe they can to the proper conclusion but I also understand the civil engineers never met an highway, airport, dam or railroad project they didn't like.
BucyrusWell that is another question different from my question. And my question is only my interpretation of the question posed by Aricat. Your question of determining the best value that can be delivered for the input seems like a rational approach, but I don’t know how anybody can trust the answer to a question arrived at by such a complex formula. How can you measure benefits delivered when comparing the power efficiency of public transportation with the freedom and convenience of the private automobile, for instance? And how can you factor in all of the competing agendas and special interests of the public and private sectors that will skew the argument? There are lawmakers who already have an irrational view of the private automobile. Trying to come up with an objective assessment of the best value for the input seems like that proverbial example of scientifically predicting how the weather is affected on one side of the earth by a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side.
Bucyrus The question should be this: Will HSR attract a large enough number of business travelers who would otherwise fly or drive, to make HSR profitable or be able to be built and operated without a public subsidy?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
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